that sent me to therapy. That article is my life. Completely. Exactly to the stage of life/kids I'm at. And I'm not sure if DH has aspergers or is a covert narcissist, or is just massively insecure.

Thanks for sharing this article.  Like  ITB2012, it is hard to tell if my DH has Aspergers or is covertly narcissistic.  But the article described my life with DH to a tee - to the part where he changed into a completely different person shortly after we were married.  He also refused to give me a party on my 50th birthday, and became irate because I expected him to make an appearance at my retirement party.   Doesn't have a clue about what real affection is about.  I have kicked myself in the butt many, many times for not leaving him sooner.  I guess someone with a history of childhood abuse is a prime candidate for a man like this.  I am finally taking action now.

Now that article was interesting. And enlightening.

My XW was likely dyslexic.  Though I am of the opinion she was just a lazy reader.  She struggled with words longer than 3-5 letters.  She would get extremely frustrated.  I would make her sit and use the two thumbs, three letters at a time, and sound it out method. When she slowed down, she could read extremely well.  She was extremely intelligent and did well in college as far as her grades were concerned.  It helped that from half way through her sophomore year of college until she graduated that I wrote every paper she was assigned.  

We met when I was 22 and she was 18-ish.  We married a month before I turned 24. She was 20 and had just started Nursing school half way through her Jr. year of college.  She was beautiful, smart as a whip, appeared confident.  I was struggling with focus as far as my studies were concerned, had just started my own corporation and was growing the business, courting investors, running corporate operations and I was going to school.  My slower progress on finishing my undergrad was one of her gaslighting topics of choice.  There were several things she would badger me about but that one was interesting since she was too F-in lazy to write her own papers.

It did not take long for the characteristics in this article to show up after we married.  She would gaslight me on any number of things.  All while I was writing all of her research papers.   I did not recognize her gaslighting or toxic crap for about six months. After that it was pure survival instinct to continue writing her papers, put in killer hours at work, and schedule night classes.  Not a conscious thing by any means.  Pure avoidance and survival instinct kicking in.   

I went from a confident, even cocky, intelligent, driven person to a wilted, walked on, shadow of my former self.

I get what this author is talking about.  XW was never Dx'd with any of the ASD syndrome of the month developmental issues and if she had been that would not change the fact that she was a bitch from hell adulterous skank whore of unequaled toxicity.

I was lucky to get out of that marriage alive much less with any spark of the person I enjoyed being before I met her.  A great therapist helped me through that. She started out as our marriage counselor.  I picked her out of the Yellow Pages because she was cheap.  It turned out I got lucky with that choice.   XW and I were in marriage counseling/therapy for about 7mos.  Until Doc sat us down at session and said "Now we we will start addressing the intimacy issues in your marriage."  Things had been improving steadily to that point. Interestingly XW had finished her BSN a month before that session.  When Doc dropped that topic, XW stood up, pronounced that she did not have a problem with sex and walked out.  6weeks later she informed me that she wanted a divorce.  I did not know it at the time but she was knocked up at that point.  Not mine. We had not been intimate in more than 8mos.

ASD certainly exists but it is not an excuse for people to be assholes.  

That is why I focus on behavior and don't really give a crap about the why of it.  The why really does not matter.

Many people would salvage decades of happy life if they would just focus on the behaviors of the people in their lives rather than tolerating an epic epidemic of asshole in their SO.

IMHO of course.

Post XW karma.  My DW, SS and I ran into my XILs about 5-6 years after my divorce from XW.   DW and I had been married about a year and a half.  We walked into a restaurant near our home and came face to face with my XMIL and XFIL.  My wife says all of the blood drained from my face.  I quickly introduced my DW and SS to my XILs then asked DW to head on to our table. I could see XILs doing mental math on how old my wife was, how old the Skid was and the years since the divorce.  Their whore of a daughter had two out of wedlock spawn with her geriatric Fortune 500 executive sugar/baby daddy breeding partner.  her two with him book ended my SS.  I said my hellos and we exchanged pleasantries and I went to our table.

About 4 years later I moved to an office not far from my XILs home.  I ran into XMIL at lunch one day and she invited me to their home for coffee.  I declined but ran into them fairly regularly after that. Eventually I did accept their invitation.  That couple of hours visit was extremely enlightening.  XW had two OOWL spawn with the guy she was cheating with when we divorced.   She got into Grad School but flunked out due to crappy grades on her research papers.  She did marry GrandPa Baby/Sugar Daddy a few years after their second son was born but got knocked up by a boyfriend while she was married to him.  

So, karma kicked her in the ass.  It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bitch from hell.

It buried her and the entire XIL clan a number of years later even deeper. But that story has nothing to do with my XW's toxic cesspool of likely ASD narcissistic crap.